MBA Program - Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management specialization

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management specialization

This track is geared for those MBA students whose goals could range from setting up their own businesses; becoming more entrepreneurial –or “intrapreneurs”—within organizations; leading innovation management projects across a variety of organizational, technological and geographic settings; or understanding and successfully tapping into new geographic markets or digital applications and opportunities.

Classes are both theoretical as well as applied, with subjects ranging from entrepreneurship and creating new businesses and business models; mobile marketing strategies; social media marketing; global policy and sustainability; or doing business in Asia.

SPECIALIZED COURSES

INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

Innovation is high on every executive’s agenda today. Innovation is seen as a key differentiator in markets that are increasingly hard-fought and it is destined to become ever more so as competitive pressures increase across all industry sectors. Innovation manifests itself in a variety of forms. It can drive new service and product offerings and development of brands, ways of marketing, business models, and delivery channels and so on, and it can also be at the root of new business opportunity creation and the launch of entirely new business models. However, the coin has a flip side, as innovation development is often expensive and can be easily imitated by competitors in the global economy. Innovation management is the discipline of managing processes in innovation.

Without proper processes, it is not possible to be efficient. Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow people in the organization to cooperate with a common understanding of goals and processes. The focus of innovation management is to allow the organization to pro-actively respond to external or internal opportunities and use its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, processes or products. By utilizing appropriate innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative forces of the whole work force towards the continuous development of an organization.

DESIGN THINKING

The word “design” has traditionally been used to describe the visual aesthetics of objects such as books, websites, products, architecture, and fashion. Yet increasingly design as a discipline is expanding to include not just the shaping of artifacts but also the ways people interact with systems, services, and organizations. As the challenges and opportunities facing society grow more complex, and as stakeholders grow more diverse, an approach known as “design thinking” is playing a greater role in finding meaningful paths forward. Design thinking is an iterative problem solving process of discovery, ideation, and experimentation that employs design based techniques to gain insight and yield innovative solutions for virtually any type of organizational or business challenge.

This course unpacks each step of the design thinking process and introduces the design thinker’s toolkit. Students will develop skills as visual thinkers, strategists, and storytellers through a hybrid of seminar discussions and collaborative projects.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

This course provides students with a broad overview of entrepreneurship. Its primary focus is on starting, financing and managing a company; however the skills learnt are also useful for people wanting to drive change as an employee within an existing company. The course includes considerable practical information based on the instructor’ hands-on experience as founding entrepreneur and investor. During the course some business idea are selected and students are requested to compete alone or in team with colleagues preparing a business plan and pitch for investors.

VENTURE CAPITAL

This course is designed to familiarize students with the issues and practices surrounding venture capital. It covers all aspects from the seed funding of a start-up venture to the sale of the company. The main focus of the course is on raising capital and understanding the drivers of value. This involves learning about the dimensions of risks and expected returns, in a context, which is characterized by incomplete information and lack of liquidity while gaining practical insights into the interaction and relationship between the investor and management. What are their respective interests and strategies? How do they come to a deal? What is the process? How do they create value? The course integrates various managerial disciplines and covers the private equity environment, financial modeling, business plan analysis, investment criteria, delivering pitches and teasers, understanding and negotiating terms and conditions, preparing for due diligence and closing.

Alumni Testimonials

Mihai Ivascu,
Romanian, Monaco MBA 2015
CEO and Founder at Moneymailme

It’s not about the brand of the school, it’s about what you get out of it. I was accepted at HBS but I had all these projects in Europe; I couldn’t afford to go over there. I decided to come to Monaco and it was the best decision of my life.
At IUM, we were in a class of 20; everybody knew each other by name. At Harvard, there were supposed to be 920 of us in 10 classes. With 920 students, it’s hard to stand out to investors… The MBA in Monaco was fantastic. I started MoneyMailMe, found new investors, business partners, and scaled the business 100 times over. Now, it has a valuation of over €30 million ($33 million). IUM gave us access to a lot of business events and leading executives in Monaco. One of the guys who assessed my MBA corporate project is now chairman of my company and an investor.
I have a lot of friends doing MBAs, and their mentor is just another professor. At IUM, we were matched with world-class entrepreneurs; guys who build big businesses from zero. My mentor sold his company for €460 million ($516 million) during my MBA. It was the perfect match. Now, we’re very good friends.
It’s definitely a good investment. You come to Monaco to network and do things you cannot do anywhere else in the world.